Beginnings
by SenpenBanka29
Summary: Only broken people with missing pieces can come together to make a whole. Dual post-engagement KabuKai drabbles. Kairi, as always, belongs to MoonlightOnAconite.
1. Legacy

**I. Legacy**

He has nothing to offer her but himself.

The name Yakushi means next to nothing; if anything it would be prudent for him to take hers. Kabuto might even prefer that, but then, what did Yutani mean? Not much more. And it, being the last tie to Sano, her father, might be a burden Kairi will be glad to be rid of. He can respect that, as much as he craves a family name of legitimacy.

It hurts a little that he can't offer her parents or a title or any kind of fortune. He knows that the last thing she's marrying him for is some kind of dowry (with the roles reversed), but it's a point of insecurity for him all the same. Other men could have introduced her warmly to loving in-laws and given her all sorts of things like a house, heirlooms, gifts any woman would love. It was all Kabuto could manage to secure the ring of silver and sapphire, to tell what he remembered of the woman who had raised him.

Kairi, however, doesn't mind in the least, and that's a comfort. She listens with glistening eyes when he talks about Nonō and the children at the orphanage he thought he'd forgotten. She treasures the ring and the little presents like the robe he'd made and the hermit crab he'd found by the sea. That's all the legacy he has. That and whatever knowledge he can pass down to her.

But, he reminds himself, she's not marrying him for any sort of compensation. She never loved him for things like that, but rather for the heartfelt smiles only they can elicit from each other, the mutual willingness to listen, the understanding, and the absence of fear. The kisses and embraces and laughter and whispers for their ears alone.

Kabuto can only offer these things. But she'd known that when she'd said yes, and she knows it now. It's enough.

He is enough.

And she is infinitely more.


	2. Commencement

**II. Commencement**

For the first time, as he beholds his future wife whom, he has just discovered, is carrying his child, Kabuto truly does find himself by defining himself in terms of others, a practice that has proven to yield tepid results when applying the label of spy, of servant.

No, this is different. He is, or rather soon will be, a husband. A father. Numbness is all he feels at first when he recites the words to himself, and then joy that paralyzes follows.

He rarely allows himself to feel fear, and he is terrified. He has no model for either of these stations in life. And the one Kairi had had was mediocre at best and cruel, not even at his worst. Kabuto realizes that for the first time, with no example to follow, he has to find out for himself what kind of man he will be.

His own mother's presence is more powerfully felt than it has been in years, even taking into account when he'd bid her watch over Kairi as she'd left for the old house by the sea for what had felt like an eternity—in reality a few weeks that had cemented the indisputable fact that he was very much irreversibly in love. Kabuto will be needing his late mother now, that much he knows, and when he can practically hear her whisper with a smile in her voice that she's so proud of him (because he knows she would be), he breaks down and weeps.

Nonō and Natsumi, their deceased mothers, have set a precedent that he knows his bride-to-be can live up to and even exceed, but the man he is becoming is still uncertain, still haunted by the things he's seen and done. He knows that all his development, all he's learned through pain and struggling, all his self-worth will be shattered instantly if the child does not love him.

But as he hears a soft giggle and a blissful whisper through tears of "You're going to be a kickass father" from the woman who has given him that opportunity, he is so light in spirit that he smiles, and he believes her.

Because this signifies the beginning of an era of his life that will be devoted to proving her right.


End file.
